A Quick Torah Thought

One of the insights the Ramban shares on this parsha is that Yitro advised Moshe that the "Place of Meeting," the O hel Mo'ed , should not be the place where justice is carried out. The former is a place where one comes to meet God, to meet Hashem, to seek guidance, to make requests, the latter, a place of adjudication. Ever so often the two become intertwined; our sages teach in the Talmud that when a beit knesset, place of prayer, becomes one of dispute, it rips apart the House of Worship, tearing it asunder, sending it up in flames. How many conflicts do we know that began in the beit knesset? Ever too many! Another thought, perhaps, on the parsha is a question that struck me in reading the interchange between Yitro and Moshe. Yitro, Moshe's father-in-law, says that he will counsel his son-in-law about how to improve his justice system, its order, its functionality, a constitutional revolution plain and simple. But after having prefaced his intent by stating that h...

 There is a rather interesting verse in the story of the exodus: Who is like You, O L ORD , among other Gods, Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Awesome in splendor, working wonders! The word "other Gods" seems baffling (Do note: some translate the word "elim" as celestials or "the "mighty.") I wanted to suggest another, slightly different reading.  Having finished the Tractate of Megillah, I noted that Yaakov, the pinnacle of the forefathers, is also referred to as an "el" (Page 18: A). He is referred to as such because of his mastery over life's circumstances, his sheer ability to grapple, maintaining his moral fiber, has elevated him over all other creatures.  With this interpretation in mind, perhaps we can gain greater insight into the above verse. Perhaps, after all, Hashem was not comparing himself to other Gods, but rather, upon stating "ba'elim Hashem," that it was not God who stood out from the other Gods, but...

I have the honor of teaching at a college, where one of the students wrote a very insightful essay on the Road Not Taken. In the essay, he quotes David Orr, the world's expert on the Road Not Taken. In fact, he even wrote a whole book on the 20 line, four stanza poem: "The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong." He writes about America's misguided search for individualism, even at the price of self-delusion, the obsession with feeling that we've taken the "road less traveled by," even "when the passing there had worn them really about the same." It seems like we can get an insight into our lives, perhaps slightly different from Orr's reading of "Road Not Taken" from this past week's Torah portion, Parshat Bo. In Judaism, it's the road taken that's most momentous, not the one not taken.  As such, there are two mitzvot regarding the paschal offering in the parsha, that ...

 In the Parsha of Va'era, there is a verse that I think provides an insight into the power of a strong spirit, one steeled by hope in the face of the possibility of despair.  Moshe Rabbeinu has affirmed Hashem's promise to bring the Jewish people to their ancestral lands, the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Torah then shares the Jewish people's response: "But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, due to a broken spirit, and the backbreaking work."  I allowed myself a little poetic license in translating the above; the JPS states: "...t hey would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage ," and Artscroll, "...but they did not heed Moses, because of shortness of breath and hard work ." I think JPS got it wrong because they equate the two, they put the wagon before the horse. I think that the verse is telling us that as long as they were strong mentally, they could handle the hard work. As...